Script for Tour of Thinkers Lodge by Teresa Kewachuk, Cathy Eaton, Vivian Godfree, and John Eaton

Tour begins in gift shop

Welcome to Thinkers’ Lodge, a National Historic Site, dedicated to peace and creating dialogue to build trust and oppose nuclear weapons. The initial Pugwash Conference in 1957 led to yearly Pugwash Conferences of Science and World Affairs all around the world. In 1995 the conferences and Joseph Rotblat were awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals with courage and determination can impact the world, and from small places can come significant contributions that change the world and make it a safer place to live.

Feel free to interrupt with any questions you may have.

Historical Background

This building wasn’t always called Thinkers’ Lodge. We know that the land was acquired around 1818 by David Pineo. Henry Gesner Pineo (1798-1874), a successful merchant, shipbuilder and member of the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia built the house for his daughter Mary who was married to Doctor Clay.

In 1918, the Clay family sold the property to Fred Dakin who ran the house as a lodge known as Pineo Lodge.

In 1928 and 1929 devastating fires destroyed the Empress Hotel on the waterfront, wharves, warehouses, stores, and homes. The flames stopped short of the Pineo Lodge.

Cyrus Eaton, a native of Pugwash who become a US citizen, never forgot his roots. After the fires, he resolved to invest in the revitalization and beautification of Pugwash 46 years after his birth in 1883 in Pugwash River. Understanding the dire straits of his hometown, he returned to offer economic support and provide jobs for the villagers. He hired unemployed workers to clear the buildings ruined in the fire and to cart in soil to convert the area into Eaton Park which he donated to the villagers to enjoy. (Now it is used for picnics, has a playground, and a stage that has musical events, and hosts the highland dancers on Canada Day. He also bought this building, the Pineo Lodge, to be a B & B run by his sister, Eva Webb, and he purchased the adjacent Lobster Canning Factory from Frank Allan which was turned into a dining hall. He hoped to revitalize the economy by providing jobs and bringing­ in tourists. He hired Andrew Cobb, an architect from Halifax, to expand the Pineo Lodge, to build the Margaret King School for grades one through eleven, and to design his summer home in Deep Cove on the South Shore on Mahone Bay.

Cyrus Eaton was born in 1883 in Pugwash River and attended a one-room school in Pugwash Junction. Influenced by his pious mother, he decided to be a Baptist minister and worked his way through high school in Amherst, then Acadia University, and finally McMasters University in Ontario.

He traveled to Cleveland to visit his uncle, Charles Eaton, a Baptist minister originally from Pugwash. One of his parishioners was John D. Rockefeller who convinced Cyrus that if you wanted to help people, it was better to provide them with jobs than it was to preach to them. This advice changed his life. During summers of college, Cyrus worked as an errand boy, a carriage driver, a body guard, and a caddy for the industrialist. After graduating, Rockefeller offered Cyrus a job and introduced him to many significant industrialists. Soon after, Cyrus branched out on his own, and made a fortune in steel, iron ore, coal, electrical plants, and railroads. Some have called him a robber baron. He became an American citizen, married, had seven children, settled on a cattle farm in Northfield, Ohio, and became a successful millionaire industrialist.

During the Great Depression, he lost his fortune and divorced. Not discouraged, he earned a second fortune and become one of the wealthier men in the world.

In 1955 when the B&B was not bringing in many tourists or adding to the Pugwash economy, Cyrus turned the lodge into a Think Tank. He invited presidents and deans of universities to share ideas about education problems and brainstorm potential solutions.

SHOW political cartoon by Bob Chambers, a cartoonist for the Halifax Chronicle. He won the Order of Canada. He created a series of cartoons based on Rodin’s Thinker; these cartoons made editorial statements about Cyrus Eaton, the Russians, and leaders like Khrushchev and Castro, and the Thinkers (the conference attendees).

(At some point mention the board in Eaton Park where visitors can stick their heads in and snap a photograph. These were created by Louise Cloutier. The Chambers family has given the lodge permission to have fundraising t-shirts and mugs (Point them out). “We must be pretty close to Pugwash.” Pugwash in 1955 was called the Home of the Thinkers.)

In great room, point out arm chairs gifted by different universities.

(Give this information in Anne Eaton’s room) 75-year-old Cyrus Eaton asked Anne Eaton whom he was courting, to help him host the 1957 conference. Anne was 35, divorced, and had a daughter, Lissy. Anne wrote a letter to her father recounting some of these tensions between the brilliant scientists. She described seeing the scientists at the Masonic Lodge meeting around tables lent by the villagers. The room also served as a primary classroom and above the chalkboard filled with scientific and mathematical notations detailing horrific destructive power of the atomic board were the letters of the alphabet with pictures of cats and kittens and ducks. She detailed how interactions between the scientists from both sides of the iron curtain were initially tense, nervous, and distrustful. However, when she and one of the Russians were paired to play crocket against Cyrus and another Russian, she told her partner about how one could send the opponent’s ball after hitting it, into the roots of the apple the tree or into the Northumberland Strait. Amazed that it was okay to send the ball of one’s host, the Russians began to relax and have fun. They shared English and Russian vocabulary, cigarettes, and laughter. These humane stories of exchanges between the participants led to the breaking down of barriers and the beginning of trust which led to working together to create documents decrying nuclear weapons and advocating for their elimination. One saying often heard was “Leave your hat and politics at the door.”

(Move to Nobel Prize room) It was not until 1955 that the Lodge began to be called Thinkers’ Lodge after Rodin’s Thinker Sculpture. Point to sculpture on bookshelves.

What events led to birth of the Pugwash Movement to rid the world of Nuclear Weapons.

On August, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki. World War II ended with some saying the Atomic bombs were responsible for ending the war while others declaring that the bomb never should have been used, and that the Japanese were on the verge on surrendering. Others say, the rationale was to deter the Russians, former allies, not to use atomic weapons. We won’t solve that argument today.

105,000 people were killed, and an equal amount were injured. For decades, many thousands of the survivals suffered terribly from burns and radiation poisoning, and the environment was poisoned.

On November 1, 1952, the US exploded the first “thermonuclear device” otherwise known as the Hydrogen Bomb. Less than a year later, on August 12, 1953 the Soviets detonated one of their own. The nuclear race was on. The Cold War was heating up.

The first US airdrop of a thermonuclear bomb happened on May 20th, 1956. The first hydrogen bomb dropped from the air exploded with a force estimated as equal to a minimum of fifteen million tons of TNT and created a fireball at least four miles wide and brighter than 500 suns. It was described as ‘by far the most stupendous release of explosive energy on earth so far.’

Then two events occurred in 1955 that led to an historic conference held at Thinkers’ Lodge in 1957. The first was the Russell/Einstein Manifesto issued on July 8, 1955. In it, Lord Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein with nine other scientists called for a conference where scientists would assess the dangers that nuclear weapons posed for the survival of human race. It was important that the conference be politically neutral so that delegates could comfortably share ideas without fearing repercussions from their governments. One particular phrase is quoted often: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” From the Russell/Einstein Manifesto. “We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you can not, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

We have a recording of it here and I encourage you to listen to it on that dial phone in the hallway.

The second event was that Cyrus Eaton began holding conferences of “thinkers and educators” at the Lodge. The first was held in 1955 and Eaton had help organizing the conference from Julian Huxley, a famous British evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. A photo of Julian and his wife is on the wall of the Cyrus Eaton bedroom. Julian is remembered for being one of the founders of the World Wildlife Foundation Fund and the first Director of UNESCO. Anybody know the connection between Julian Huxley and Joggins Fossil Cliffs? (short and long answers to this one – not written).

In 1955, after reading the Manifesto, Cyrus Eaton wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell and offered to host and underwrite the gathering that Russell and Einstein called for in the Manifesto. Disastrous obstacles could have derailed the conference: Einstein died. Egypt and Israel went to war over the Suez Canal. Bertrand Russell couldn’t attend conference because he was ill

Nevertheless, 22 distinguished and brave scientists gathered from 11 different countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain. These thinkers generated a movement since called the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs - sometimes just called the Pugwash Movement for short.

At first, no one took his invitation seriously because in England there was a buffoon cartoon character named Captain Pugwash. [See book of cartoons in gift shop]. The scientists hoped to have the conference in India, but the political crisis in the Suez Canal made that impossible. After a second invitation from Eaton who said his funding of the conference could be anonymous, they located Pugwash on the map and accepted his invitation. Twenty-two scientists and some translators arrived from Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Communist China, France, Hungary, Japan, Communist Russia, and the United States. Seven of these scientists won Nobel Prizes, including Joseph Rotblat and Linus Pauling who both received the Nobel Peace Prize. Some scientists flew into Quebec and then traveled to Halifax or Moncton where local Pugwash drivers brought them to the village. The scientists were billeted at Thinkers Lodge, on railroad cars, and in private people’s homes. They ate their meals at the Lobster Factory and had their meetings in the high school and at the Masonic Lodge, now restored as the Peace Hall.

In 1995 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Pugwash Conferences and to Joseph Rotblat, its leading spirit. The medal displayed here is Professor Rotblat’s Nobel Peace Prize. It was his wish that the medal be brought to Thinkers’ Lodge to serve as an inspiration to those who see it and as a commemoration of the event that started the movement in 1957.

Joseph Rotblat was an inspiring scientist who visited this Lodge numerous times - the last time in 2003, the 46th anniversary. There is some recorded footage of that visit which you can see online.

Display in hallway: Who and what do you recognize? This display and these icons remind us what the world was like in the 1950.

Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier when he became the first black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century. He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and was named Rookie of the Year that year, National League MVP in 1949 and a World Series champ in 1955.

Photo of women at computers were NASA technicians. NASA was founded in 1958. It is significant that women played a significant role in doing the computations. Shetterly’s Hidden Figures tells the untold true story of the African American women mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Civil Rights era. The movie aired in 2017.

Kellogs Cornflake ad

Newspaper Article about Einstein. He was a life-long pacifist and an activist against nuclear weapons; however, under the urging of Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt a letter urging that the bomb be build Although he opposed the making of weapons, he had been forced to conclude, that pacifism would not succeed against the Nazis, who viewed violence as an end in itself. He could not, he decided, let his inaction give Germany sole possession of such destructive power. The letter was dated August 2, 1939. You might want to read letter Einstein wrote to Eaton in 1946 asking for his financial support against nuclear weapons.

The Suez Canal Crisis: On October 29, 1956, Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957.

Atomic Age Powwow article

Elvis Presley’s musical career began in 1954.

An ad with Cyrus Eaton and his shorthorn cattle was used by Nova Scotia tourist bureau to urge people to visit this beautiful province.

Chuck Berry is known as the father of rock ‘n roll and one who brought the worlds of black and whites together through music

James Dean was an actor known for his role in Rebel Without a Cause. He died in a tragic car accident in 1955 when he was 24.

Rosa Parks is pictured with Martin Luther King in 1955. Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Although not the first to resist bus segregation, she was chosen to be central figure in court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating segregation laws in Alabama.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev publicized Stalin's crimes, was a major player in the Cuban Missile Crisis and established a more open form of Communism in the USSR. He and Cyrus Eaton were friends.

Dr. Seuss, Theodore Seuss Geisel, wrote and illustrated more than 60 books. He attacked racism, fascism, isolationism, and anti-Semitism in political cartoons. His first book was rejected by every publisher he submitted it to. As a member of the military, he made animated training films and propaganda posters. Dr. Seuss was a pullitzer prize in 1984 for contribution to children’s literature.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism.

The Korean Was was Fought from 1950 to 1953. Communist North Korea invaded its southern, democratic neighbor. Backed by the United Nations, with many of the troops furnished by the United States, South Korea resisted. The Korean War saw the United States follow its policy of containment as it worked to block aggression and halt the spread of Communism. As such, the Korean War may be seen as one of the many proxy wars fought during the Cold War.

An ad for atomic electric power. Nuclear Power had beneficial uses and seemed an alternative to fossil fuels.

Coffee ad for Maxwell coffee

Sputnik. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. This surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.

Bob Chambers created a series of political cartoons using variations of Rodin's Thinker to depict visual commentary on Thinkers Lodge, Cyrus Eaton, Khrushchev, and the Pugwash Conferences. You will find mugs and t-shirts on sale depicting some of his cartoons.

Fidel Castro was leader of socialist Cuba from 1958 until 2008. Cyrus Eaton visited him and tried to help their cattle-breeding program. The Sea of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis played significant roles in Cuban/Soviet Union/United States relationships.

Queen Elizabeth became queen in 1953 six years after she married Prince Phillip.

Edmond Hillary and Tanzing Norgay summated Mount Everest in 1953.

However, what is more significant than recognizing the icons of the 1950s is paying attention to the two circles showing the destructive force of the Atomic Bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan On August 6 and August 9, 1945. The Japanese surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945. The larger circle shows how much more Destructive weapons have been created and tested. President Kim Jong II of North Korea is testing these weapons and threatening to unleash them. Pay attention to the Iran Nuclear Treaty and what is means if the US pulls out.

Cyrus Eaton Room. Sometimes Cyrus stayed here. However, he preferred to stay across the street at the Eaton-Webb Cottage where his sister Eva lived. Eva ran the lodge between 1930 and 1954 when it was a Bed and Breakfast. Has anyone heard that this is Cyrus Eaton’s summer home or his ancestral estate? Neither is true. Actually, Cyrus built a summer home in Upper Blandford on Mahone Bay. The Havel family bought the house around 1980 and three generations greatly loved it and the land. Sadly, the house burned down in 2015.

You can listen to segment on your phone about Cyrus Eaton, his roots in Pugwash, his career as an industrialist, his philanthropic endeavors, and his quest to bring peaceful relationships between communist and democratic countries.

You can listen to segment on your phone about Charles Eaton, born in Pugwash and Baptist minister. Cyrus’s uncle was a New Congressman, involved with creating the Marshall Plan, and signer of the UN.

Notice the photographs of Cyrus’s summer home in Deep Cove, Nova Scotia on the South Shore.

Notice photographs of Julian Huxley and Charles Darwin as well as Eaton’s father, Joseph Howe Eaton. Joseph was a farmer, the postmaster, and he ran a general store.

Anne Eaton bedroom.

Listen on your phone to a recording she made reading a letter she wrote to her father about the participants, Judge Kinder just after the 1957 conference ended.

Anne (Kinder Jones) Eaton attended the 1957 conference and acted as the hostess for Cyrus Eaton who was courting her. She was 35, and he was 75. Anne’s youth, charm, and humor were instrumental in helping visiting scientists lay aside their political differences and trust one another. Anne, a gifted writer, recounted how tension between the scientists began to dissolve. On the computer in her room, She used to tell visitors, “You are welcome to leave your hat and your ideology at the door.” Anne contracted polio when she was 23 after her daughter Lissy was born. She was confined to a wheelchair. But it never dampened her spirits or her drive or passion for peace initiatives and fighting for rights of women and rights of African Americans. She was key to providing an atmosphere that helped the conference participants share ideas candidly. She helped German scientists translate their papers into English and describes a competitive crocket game

In 2010 Mount Saint Vincent University and Thinkers Lodge collaborated on a conference to remember and honor the contributions of Murial Duckworth to the Peace Movement. She died in 2009 at the age of 100. To celebrate the contributions of two women at that conference: Anne Eaton and Ruth Adams, Susan Took painted this illustration above the mantel. Ruth Adams was Joseph Rotblat’s assistant and became a well-known activist herself. Copies of her children’s book, Blue is for Bluenose, are available in the gift shop. Her husband, Richard Rudnicki, wrote and illustrated a children’s book on Cyrus Eaton that was published in 2016. If you are interested in learning more about Ruth Adams and Anne Eaton, read the talk on the bureau from the 2010 Conference by Sandy Butcher. Additional information is available on the website at www.thinkerslodgehistories.org.

Note the plaque on the wall indicating that Anne Eaton and Cyrus Eaton were jointed awarded the Canada Federalist Peace Award in 1979, the year that Cyrus died.

Read Sandy Butcher’s talk describing contributions of Anne Eaton and Ruth Adams. Ruth was Rotblat’s assistant early in her career.

Joseph Rotblat’s Bedroom.

Rotblat stayed at Thinkers Lodge many times. He was a life-long peace activist and articulate spokesperson for the anti-nuclear weapons movement. He was the spirit of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

His diploma from Warsaw is displayed on the wall with an English translation.

The photograph over the fireplace shows Joseph Rotblat with his assistant, Ruth Adams, who was also a life-long peace activist.

Listen to segment on your phone to learn more about Rotblat’s life.

Mural on the wall before the steps leading to the Great Room. This enlarged photograph is from a conference in 1960 called Continuing Education held at Thinkers Lodge. Eaton, a life-long learner, supported dialogue in Education. He served as a Trustee of the University of Chicago and he was a strong benefactor of that university as well as Acadia University where he studied for the ministry and McMaster from where he graduated. Before attending McMaster, he attended Amherst Academy, graduating in 1899. At graduation, he won a prize: The Complete Works of Charles Darwin and The Complete Works of Aldous Huxley. We hope someday to have those books in the Lodge. Eaton also built two schools in Pugwash and another in his hometown, Northfield, Ohio.

The Great Room and it seems like a fitting place to talk a little about the history of Pugwash and of this building and its architecture as well as Pugwash as a hub for shipbuilding.

A Brief History of Pugwash (From a discussion led by Vivian Godfree of the North Cumberland Historical Society at the Lobster Factory on July 10, 2010.)

The name Pugwash is probably derived from the native Mi’kmah name Pagwecht or Pagweak, which means shallow water. The Mi’kmah came to the area for the abundance of fish and waterfowl, but there is no evidence that they established a permanent settlement.

In 1697 Pugwash became part of a seigneurial grant of land awarded to a French nobleman Pierre Noel Legardeur Tilly. It is unlikely he ever visited; however, Acadians settled in the area until their expulsion in 1755. We know very little about the Acadians. It’s possible there are in the area remains of Acadian dykes.

United Empire Loyalists, who had fought on the side of the British crown, journeyed to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. Many of them were given land grants in Canada. Two brothers, Stephen and Abraham Seaman, were given grants in the Fort Lawrence area. They purchased land around Pugwash Harbour from three Mi’kmah. Stephen Seaman acquired 400 acres on the east side of the harbour and his brother Abraham Seaman acquired 400 acres on the west of the harbour, all for £5. The first house in Pugwash on record was built by Stephen Seaman in 1807. Due to financial difficulties, Stephen Seaman lost this land in an auction in 1812 to some lawyers, who were land dealers. Stephen was not informed of this auction and spent many years petitioning for some compensation, which he finally was given. Part of the Seaman land was sold in to David Sampson Pineo in 1818, and another part to Oliver King. David Pineo then sold part of his land to Joseph Black. Cyrus Eaton’s great-grandfather Amos Eaton moved to Pugwash from Cornwallis, Nova Scotia.

Imagine how local residents in the early 19th century made their living. Look out the window for some clues. Pugwash developed rapidly because of the fine timber stands within easy reach for shipment overseas, and the beginning of a boom in shipbuilding. The name Waterford stuck as a name from 1827 to 1829. By 1830 the name had reverted back to Pugwash, which means Shallow Waters due to the sandbars that are frequently dredged to let ships with big keels to have a safe harbor. What exports do you think helped sustain the village?

In 1845 James Black plotted and arranged the layout of lots and streets that became the core of the present-day village. He wanted the development of the village to more orderly, and to be diverted away from the area around Crescent beach.

Donald Mckay, an ancestor of Cyrus Eaton, designed and built Clipper Ships in Bostons. You can listen on your phone to segment about his life and the Clipper Ships. The wooded model of The Flying Cloud displayed here was built by Ramon Bourque, Cyrus’s long-time butler, who managed the staff for many of the conferences here.

Levy Eaton and the George Henderson Brigantien Ship. On December 4,1859, a ship built in Pugwash, called the George Henderson, sailed out of Pugwash Harbour to New Zealand, carrying a number of Pugwash and Gulf Shore families including the ship builder himself, Levi Woodworth Eaton. It reached Cape Town, South Africa, on February 6, 1860, then it landed in Sydney, Australia on April 4, 1860. Four and half months after its departure from Pugwash Harbour, it reached Auckland, New Zealand on April 27, 1860. Four months later it wrecked off New Plymouth in August, 1960. Recently in another storm, the ship arose, its ribs still identifiable. But again, it disappeared beneath the surface.

Population of Pugwash: By 1871 the population of Pugwash had expanded to over 3,000 (three times the current population) There were four hotels, a temperance house, six churches, a Masonic lodge, a tannery, two blacksmiths, three physicians and three teachers.

Decline of Shipbuilding in Pugwash: Shipbuilding began to decline in the 1870s but did not cease until 1919. Pugwash went through an economic decline and even the railway line which was built with a spur into Pugwash in 1889 did not give the expected boost.

Pugwash Fires: Devastating fires destroyed much of the village in 1877, 1890, 1898, 1901, 1928, 1929. Think about what might have caused these fires. The last fire of note occurred on May 12, 1929 when 35 buildings were consumed.

Cyrus Eaton and Pineo Lodge: After this fire, Cyrus Eaton bought Pineo Lodge (now known as Thinkers’ Lodge) and the land adjacent to it, which is now Eaton Park. The Pugwash Park Commission, which owns and administers the Lodge, was established in August 1929 as a non‐profit corporation by an act of the Nova Scotia Legislature. Cyrus Eaton employed many of the local people to transport the soil from a hill by the wharf (which can be seen in earlier photos of Pugwash) to fill and build up the land for the park.

1996 Fire at Thinkers Lodge: In 1996 fire at Thinkers Lodge started by an electrical short in the walls of the gift shop. Firefighters from four towns rushed to douse the fire, and villagers from Pugwash hurried to the Lodge. Firefighters handed every piece of furniture, every hooked rug, photograph, lamp and book to villagers who waited outside forming a long line all the way to the Lobster Factory. They passed each treasure hand to hand from one person to another.

History of Thinkers Lodge Building:

The original Pineo Building likely had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs on either side of our front door. The kitchen was probably added on when a small building was moved here. In 1929, Cyrus Eaton hired Andrew Cobb, a well-known architect from Halifax to remodel it. The great room, the room where the Nobel Prize and Lenin Prize, and the Cyrus Eaton and Anne Eaton bedrooms would have been added. Each room has a fireplace and bathroom. You can see photographs of what it looked like before it was remodeled on the Thinkerslodgehistories.com website.

A primary concern was staying warm in winter and protecting against the wind off the Strait. Consequently, there were no windows on this west-facing wall when the original house was constructed, somewhere between 1822 and 1842. We believe it was enlarged in the 1880s when the kitchen and Anne Eaton’s room were added. Cobb did the most to change the Lodge. He the great room, the room where the Nobel Peace Prize and Lenin Peace are, Cyrus Eaton’s room, the third staircase, and bedroom upstairs, the windows and west facing porch. This has the effect of opening the house up to the sunsets and the view of the Strait. Ron Burdock is the man for this section.

Wood fire places entirely heated The Lodge until 1958. Then Eaton added an oil furnace to heat the downstairs rooms. During the recent restoration in 2010, heat was expanded to all rooms.

The restoration in 2010 to convert this building into an historic site was overseen by CREDA who also oversaw the building of Joggins, the UNESCO site

Back in the Gift Shop: Encourage buying gifts and also making donation. Remind people that we have drawing for up to 13 people to stay in Thinkers Lodge. Remind them we do weddings, conferences, workshops, and retreats for executives. Ask them to do a review on TripAdvisor.

Tour of Thinker Lodge

​Tour Script

Tour begins in gift shop

Welcome to Thinkers’ Lodge, a National Historic Site, dedicated to peace and creating dialogue to build trust and oppose nuclear weapons. The initial Pugwash Conference in 1957 led to yearly Pugwash Conferences of Science and World Affairs all around the world. In 1995 the conferences and Joseph Rotblat were awarded Nobel Peace Prize. Individuals with courage and determination can impact the world, and from small places can come significant contributions that change the world and make it a safer place to live.

Feel free to interrupt with any questions you may have.

Historical Background

This building wasn’t always called Thinkers’ Lodge. We know that the land was acquired around 1818 by David Pineo. Henry Gesner Pineo (1798-1874), a successful merchant, shipbuilder and member of the Legislative Council of Nova Scotia built the house for his daughter Mary who was married to Doctor Clay.

In 1918, the Clay family sold the property to Fred Dakin who ran the house as a lodge known as Pineo Lodge.

In 1928 and 1929 devastating fires destroyed the Empress Hotel on the waterfront, wharves, warehouses, stores, and homes. The flames stopped short of the Pineo Lodge.

Cyrus Eaton, a native of Pugwash who become a US citizen, never forgot his roots. After the fires, he resolved to invest in the revitalization and beautification of Pugwash 46 years after his birth in 1883 in Pugwash River. Understanding the dire straits of his hometown, he returned to offer economic support and provide jobs for the villagers. He hired unemployed workers to clear the buildings ruined in the fire and to cart in soil to convert the area into Eaton Park which he donated to the villagers to enjoy. (Now it is used for picnics, has a playground, and a stage that has musical events, and hosts the highland dancers on Canada Day. He also bought this building, the Pineo Lodge, to be a B & B run by his sister, Eva Webb, and he purchased the adjacent Lobster Canning Factory from Frank Allan which was turned into a dining hall. He hoped to revitalize the economy by providing jobs and bringing­ in tourists. He hired Andrew Cobb, an architect from Halifax, to expand the Pineo Lodge, to build the Margaret King School for grades one through eleven, and to design his summer home in Deep Cove on the South Shore on Mahone Bay.

Cyrus Eaton was born in 1883 in Pugwash River and attended a one-room school in Pugwash Junction. Influenced by his pious mother, he decided to be a Baptist minister and worked his way through high school in Amherst, then Acadia University, and finally McMasters University in Ontario.

He traveled to Cleveland to visit his uncle, Charles Eaton, a Baptist minister originally from Pugwash. One of his parishioners was John D. Rockefeller who convinced Cyrus that if you wanted to help people, it was better to provide them with jobs than it was to preach to them. This advice changed his life. During summers of college, Cyrus worked as an errand boy, a carriage driver, a body guard, and a caddy for the industrialist. After graduating, Rockefeller offered Cyrus a job and introduced him to many significant industrialists. Soon after, Cyrus branched out on his own, and made a fortune in steel, iron ore, coal, electrical plants, and railroads. Some have called him a robber baron. He became an American citizen, married, had seven children, settled on a cattle farm in Northfield, Ohio, and became a successful millionaire industrialist.

During the Great Depression, he lost his fortune and divorced. Not discouraged, he earned a second fortune and become one of the wealthier men in the world.

In 1955 when the B&B was not bringing in many tourists or adding to the Pugwash economy, Cyrus turned the lodge into a Think Tank. He invited presidents and deans of universities to share ideas about education problems and brainstorm potential solutions.

SHOW political cartoon by Bob Chambers, a cartoonist for the Halifax Chronicle. He won the Order of Canada. He created a series of cartoons based on Rodin’s Thinker; these cartoons made editorial statements about Cyrus Eaton, the Russians, and leaders like Khrushchev and Castro, and the Thinkers (the conference attendees).

(At some point mention the board in Eaton Park where visitors can stick their heads in and snap a photograph. These were created by Louise Cloutier. The Chambers family has given the lodge permission to have fundraising t-shirts and mugs (Point them out). “We must be pretty close to Pugwash.” Pugwash in 1955 was called the Home of the Thinkers.)

In great room, point out arm chairs gifted by different universities.

(Give this information in Anne Eaton’s room) 75-year-old Cyrus Eaton asked Anne Eaton whom he was courting, to help him host the 1957 conference. Anne was 35, divorced, and had a daughter, Lissy. Anne wrote a letter to her father recounting some of these tensions between the brilliant scientists. She described seeing the scientists at the Masonic Lodge meeting around tables lent by the villagers. The room also served as a primary classroom and above the chalkboard filled with scientific and mathematical notations detailing horrific destructive power of the atomic board were the letters of the alphabet with pictures of cats and kittens and ducks. She detailed how interactions between the scientists from both sides of the iron curtain were initially tense, nervous, and distrustful. However, when she and one of the Russians were paired to play crocket against Cyrus and another Russian, she told her partner about how one could send the opponent’s ball after hitting it, into the roots of the apple the tree or into the Northumberland Strait. Amazed that it was okay to send the ball of one’s host, the Russians began to relax and have fun. They shared English and Russian vocabulary, cigarettes, and laughter. These humane stories of exchanges between the participants led to the breaking down of barriers and the beginning of trust which led to working together to create documents decrying nuclear weapons and advocating for their elimination. One saying often heard was “Leave your hat and politics at the door.”

(Move to Nobel Prize room) It was not until 1955 that the Lodge began to be called Thinkers’ Lodge after Rodin’s Thinker Sculpture. Point to sculpture on bookshelves.

What events led to birth of the Pugwash Movement to rid the world of Nuclear Weapons.

On August, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki. World War II ended with some saying the Atomic bombs were responsible for ending the war while others declaring that the bomb never should have been used, and that the Japanese were on the verge on surrendering. Others say, the rationale was to deter the Russians, former allies, not to use atomic weapons. We won’t solve that argument today.

105,000 people were killed, and an equal amount were injured. For decades, many thousands of the survivals suffered terribly from burns and radiation poisoning, and the environment was poisoned.

On November 1, 1952, the US exploded the first “thermonuclear device” otherwise known as the Hydrogen Bomb. Less than a year later, on August 12, 1953 the Soviets detonated one of their own. The nuclear race was on. The Cold War was heating up.

The first US airdrop of a thermonuclear bomb happened on May 20th, 1956. The first hydrogen bomb dropped from the air exploded with a force estimated as equal to a minimum of fifteen million tons of TNT and created a fireball at least four miles wide and brighter than 500 suns. It was described as ‘by far the most stupendous release of explosive energy on earth so far.’

Then two events occurred in 1955 that led to an historic conference held at Thinkers’ Lodge in 1957. The first was the Russell/Einstein Manifesto issued on July 8, 1955. In it, Lord Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein with nine other scientists called for a conference where scientists would assess the dangers that nuclear weapons posed for the survival of human race. It was important that the conference be politically neutral so that delegates could comfortably share ideas without fearing repercussions from their governments. One particular phrase is quoted often: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” From the Russell/Einstein Manifesto. “We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you can not, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

We have a recording of it here and I encourage you to listen to it on that dial phone in the hallway.

The second event was that Cyrus Eaton began holding conferences of “thinkers and educators” at the Lodge. The first was held in 1955 and Eaton had help organizing the conference from Julian Huxley, a famous British evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. A photo of Julian and his wife is on the wall of the Cyrus Eaton bedroom. Julian is remembered for being one of the founders of the World Wildlife Foundation Fund and the first Director of UNESCO. Anybody know the connection between Julian Huxley and Joggins Fossil Cliffs? (short and long answers to this one – not written).

In 1955, after reading the Manifesto, Cyrus Eaton wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell and offered to host and underwrite the gathering that Russell and Einstein called for in the Manifesto. Disastrous obstacles could have derailed the conference: Einstein died. Egypt and Israel went to war over the Suez Canal. Bertrand Russell couldn’t attend conference because he was ill

Nevertheless, 22 distinguished and brave scientists gathered from 11 different countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain. These thinkers generated a movement since called the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs - sometimes just called the Pugwash Movement for short.

At first, no one took his invitation seriously because in England there was a buffoon cartoon character named Captain Pugwash. [See book of cartoons in gift shop]. The scientists hoped to have the conference in India, but the political crisis in the Suez Canal made that impossible. After a second invitation from Eaton who said his funding of the conference could be anonymous, they located Pugwash on the map and accepted his invitation. Twenty-two scientists and some translators arrived from Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, Communist China, France, Hungary, Japan, Communist Russia, and the United States. Seven of these scientists won Nobel Prizes, including Joseph Rotblat and Linus Pauling who both received the Nobel Peace Prize. Some scientists flew into Quebec and then traveled to Halifax or Moncton where local Pugwash drivers brought them to the village. The scientists were billeted at Thinkers Lodge, on railroad cars, and in private people’s homes. They ate their meals at the Lobster Factory and had their meetings in the high school and at the Masonic Lodge, now restored as the Peace Hall.

In 1995 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the Pugwash Conferences and to Joseph Rotblat, its leading spirit. The medal displayed here is Professor Rotblat’s Nobel Peace Prize. It was his wish that the medal be brought to Thinkers’ Lodge to serve as an inspiration to those who see it and as a commemoration of the event that started the movement in 1957.

Joseph Rotblat was an inspiring scientist who visited this Lodge numerous times - the last time in 2003, the 46th anniversary. There is some recorded footage of that visit which you can see online.

Display in hallway: Who and what do you recognize? This display and these icons remind us what the world was like in the 1950.

Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier when he became the first black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century. He signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and was named Rookie of the Year that year, National League MVP in 1949 and a World Series champ in 1955.

Photo of women at computers were NASA technicians. NASA was founded in 1958. It is significant that women played a significant role in doing the computations. Shetterly’s Hidden Figures tells the untold true story of the African American women mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Civil Rights era. The movie aired in 2017.

Kellogs Cornflake ad

Newspaper Article about Einstein. He was a life-long pacifist and an activist against nuclear weapons; however, under the urging of Leo Szilard, Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt a letter urging that the bomb be build Although he opposed the making of weapons, he had been forced to conclude, that pacifism would not succeed against the Nazis, who viewed violence as an end in itself. He could not, he decided, let his inaction give Germany sole possession of such destructive power. The letter was dated August 2, 1939. You might want to read letter Einstein wrote to Eaton in 1946 asking for his financial support against nuclear weapons.

The Suez Canal Crisis: On October 29, 1956, Israeli armed forces pushed into Egypt toward the Suez Canal after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-70) nationalized the canal in July of that same year, initiating the Suez Crisis. The Israelis soon were joined by French and British forces, which nearly brought the Soviet Union into the conflict, and damaged their relationships with the United States. In the end, the British, French and Israeli governments withdrew their troops in late 1956 and early 1957.

Atomic Age Powwow article

Elvis Presley’s musical career began in 1954.

An ad with Cyrus Eaton and his shorthorn cattle was used by Nova Scotia tourist bureau to urge people to visit this beautiful province.

Chuck Berry is known as the father of rock ‘n roll and one who brought the worlds of black and whites together through music

James Dean was an actor known for his role in Rebel Without a Cause. He died in a tragic car accident in 1955 when he was 24.

Rosa Parks is pictured with Martin Luther King in 1955. Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Although not the first to resist bus segregation, she was chosen to be central figure in court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating segregation laws in Alabama.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev publicized Stalin's crimes, was a major player in the Cuban Missile Crisis and established a more open form of Communism in the USSR. He and Cyrus Eaton were friends.

Dr. Seuss, Theodore Seuss Geisel, wrote and illustrated more than 60 books. He attacked racism, fascism, isolationism, and anti-Semitism in political cartoons. His first book was rejected by every publisher he submitted it to. As a member of the military, he made animated training films and propaganda posters. Dr. Seuss was a pullitzer prize in 1984 for contribution to children’s literature.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than two decades, instituting a reign of terror while modernizing Russia and helping to defeat Nazism.

The Korean Was was Fought from 1950 to 1953. Communist North Korea invaded its southern, democratic neighbor. Backed by the United Nations, with many of the troops furnished by the United States, South Korea resisted. The Korean War saw the United States follow its policy of containment as it worked to block aggression and halt the spread of Communism. As such, the Korean War may be seen as one of the many proxy wars fought during the Cold War.

An ad for atomic electric power. Nuclear Power had beneficial uses and seemed an alternative to fossil fuels.

Coffee ad for Maxwell coffee

Sputnik. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. This surprise success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space Race, a part of the larger Cold War. The launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments.

Bob Chambers created a series of political cartoons using variations of Rodin's Thinker to depict visual commentary on Thinkers Lodge, Cyrus Eaton, Khrushchev, and the Pugwash Conferences. You will find mugs and t-shirts on sale depicting some of his cartoons.

Fidel Castro was leader of socialist Cuba from 1958 until 2008. Cyrus Eaton visited him and tried to help their cattle-breeding program. The Sea of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis played significant roles in Cuban/Soviet Union/United States relationships.

Queen Elizabeth became queen in 1953 six years after she married Prince Phillip.

Edmond Hillary and Tanzing Norgay summated Mount Everest in 1953.

However, what is more significant than recognizing the icons of the 1950s is paying attention to the two circles showing the destructive force of the Atomic Bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan On August 6 and August 9, 1945. The Japanese surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945. The larger circle shows how much more Destructive weapons have been created and tested. President Kim Jong II of North Korea is testing these weapons and threatening to unleash them. Pay attention to the Iran Nuclear Treaty and what is means if the US pulls out.

Cyrus Eaton Room. Sometimes Cyrus stayed here. However, he preferred to stay across the street at the Eaton-Webb Cottage where his sister Eva lived. Eva ran the lodge between 1930 and 1954 when it was a Bed and Breakfast. Has anyone heard that this is Cyrus Eaton’s summer home or his ancestral estate? Neither is true. Actually, Cyrus built a summer home in Upper Blandford on Mahone Bay. The Havel family bought the house around 1980 and three generations greatly loved it and the land. Sadly, the house burned down in 2015.

You can listen to segment on your phone about Cyrus Eaton, his roots in Pugwash, his career as an industrialist, his philanthropic endeavors, and his quest to bring peaceful relationships between communist and democratic countries.

You can listen to segment on your phone about Charles Eaton, born in Pugwash and Baptist minister. Cyrus’s uncle was a New Congressman, involved with creating the Marshall Plan, and signer of the UN.

Notice the photographs of Cyrus’s summer home in Deep Cove, Nova Scotia on the South Shore.

Notice photographs of Julian Huxley and Charles Darwin as well as Eaton’s father, Joseph Howe Eaton. Joseph was a farmer, the postmaster, and he ran a general store.

Anne Eaton bedroom.

Listen on your phone to a recording she made reading a letter she wrote to her father about the participants, Judge Kinder just after the 1957 conference ended.

Anne (Kinder Jones) Eaton attended the 1957 conference and acted as the hostess for Cyrus Eaton who was courting her. She was 35, and he was 75. Anne’s youth, charm, and humor were instrumental in helping visiting scientists lay aside their political differences and trust one another. Anne, a gifted writer, recounted how tension between the scientists began to dissolve. On the computer in her room, She used to tell visitors, “You are welcome to leave your hat and your ideology at the door.” Anne contracted polio when she was 23 after her daughter Lissy was born. She was confined to a wheelchair. But it never dampened her spirits or her drive or passion for peace initiatives and fighting for rights of women and rights of African Americans. She was key to providing an atmosphere that helped the conference participants share ideas candidly. She helped German scientists translate their papers into English and describes a competitive crocket game

In 2010 Mount Saint Vincent University and Thinkers Lodge collaborated on a conference to remember and honor the contributions of Murial Duckworth to the Peace Movement. She died in 2009 at the age of 100. To celebrate the contributions of two women at that conference: Anne Eaton and Ruth Adams, Susan Took painted this illustration above the mantel. Ruth Adams was Joseph Rotblat’s assistant and became a well-known activist herself. Copies of her children’s book, Blue is for Bluenose, are available in the gift shop. Her husband, Richard Rudnicki, wrote and illustrated a children’s book on Cyrus Eaton that was published in 2016. If you are interested in learning more about Ruth Adams and Anne Eaton, read the talk on the bureau from the 2010 Conference by Sandy Butcher. Additional information is available on the website at www.thinkerslodgehistories.org.

Note the plaque on the wall indicating that Anne Eaton and Cyrus Eaton were jointed awarded the Canada Federalist Peace Award in 1979, the year that Cyrus died.

Read Sandy Butcher’s talk describing contributions of Anne Eaton and Ruth Adams. Ruth was Rotblat’s assistant early in her career.

Joseph Rotblat’s Bedroom.

Rotblat stayed at Thinkers Lodge many times. He was a life-long peace activist and articulate spokesperson for the anti-nuclear weapons movement. He was the spirit of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

His diploma from Warsaw is displayed on the wall with an English translation.

The photograph over the fireplace shows Joseph Rotblat with his assistant, Ruth Adams, who was also a life-long peace activist.

Listen to segment on your phone to learn more about Rotblat’s life.

Mural on the wall before the steps leading to the Great Room. This enlarged photograph is from a conference in 1960 called Continuing Education held at Thinkers Lodge. Eaton, a life-long learner, supported dialogue in Education. He served as a Trustee of the University of Chicago and he was a strong benefactor of that university as well as Acadia University where he studied for the ministry and McMaster from where he graduated. Before attending McMaster, he attended Amherst Academy, graduating in 1899. At graduation, he won a prize: The Complete Works of Charles Darwin and The Complete Works of Aldous Huxley. We hope someday to have those books in the Lodge. Eaton also built two schools in Pugwash and another in his hometown, Northfield, Ohio.

The Great Room and it seems like a fitting place to talk a little about the history of Pugwash and of this building and its architecture as well as Pugwash as a hub for shipbuilding.

A Brief History of Pugwash (From a discussion led by Vivian Godfree of the North Cumberland Historical Society at the Lobster Factory on July 10, 2010.)

The name Pugwash is probably derived from the native Mi’kmah name Pagwecht or Pagweak, which means shallow water. The Mi’kmah came to the area for the abundance of fish and waterfowl, but there is no evidence that they established a permanent settlement.

In 1697 Pugwash became part of a seigneurial grant of land awarded to a French nobleman Pierre Noel Legardeur Tilly. It is unlikely he ever visited; however, Acadians settled in the area until their expulsion in 1755. We know very little about the Acadians. It’s possible there are in the area remains of Acadian dykes.

United Empire Loyalists, who had fought on the side of the British crown, journeyed to Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. Many of them were given land grants in Canada. Two brothers, Stephen and Abraham Seaman, were given grants in the Fort Lawrence area. They purchased land around Pugwash Harbour from three Mi’kmah. Stephen Seaman acquired 400 acres on the east side of the harbour and his brother Abraham Seaman acquired 400 acres on the west of the harbour, all for £5. The first house in Pugwash on record was built by Stephen Seaman in 1807. Due to financial difficulties, Stephen Seaman lost this land in an auction in 1812 to some lawyers, who were land dealers. Stephen was not informed of this auction and spent many years petitioning for some compensation, which he finally was given. Part of the Seaman land was sold in to David Sampson Pineo in 1818, and another part to Oliver King. David Pineo then sold part of his land to Joseph Black. Cyrus Eaton’s great-grandfather Amos Eaton moved to Pugwash from Cornwallis, Nova Scotia.

Imagine how local residents in the early 19th century made their living. Look out the window for some clues. Pugwash developed rapidly because of the fine timber stands within easy reach for shipment overseas, and the beginning of a boom in shipbuilding. The name Waterford stuck as a name from 1827 to 1829. By 1830 the name had reverted back to Pugwash, which means Shallow Waters due to the sandbars that are frequently dredged to let ships with big keels to have a safe harbor. What exports do you think helped sustain the village?

In 1845 James Black plotted and arranged the layout of lots and streets that became the core of the present-day village. He wanted the development of the village to more orderly, and to be diverted away from the area around Crescent beach.

Donald Mckay, an ancestor of Cyrus Eaton, designed and built Clipper Ships in Bostons. You can listen on your phone to segment about his life and the Clipper Ships. The wooded model of The Flying Cloud displayed here was built by Ramon Bourque, Cyrus’s long-time butler, who managed the staff for many of the conferences here.

Levy Eaton and the George Henderson Brigantien Ship. On December 4,1859, a ship built in Pugwash, called the George Henderson, sailed out of Pugwash Harbour to New Zealand, carrying a number of Pugwash and Gulf Shore families including the ship builder himself, Levi Woodworth Eaton. It reached Cape Town, South Africa, on February 6, 1860, then it landed in Sydney, Australia on April 4, 1860. Four and half months after its departure from Pugwash Harbour, it reached Auckland, New Zealand on April 27, 1860. Four months later it wrecked off New Plymouth in August, 1960. Recently in another storm, the ship arose, its ribs still identifiable. But again, it disappeared beneath the surface.

Population of Pugwash: By 1871 the population of Pugwash had expanded to over 3,000 (three times the current population) There were four hotels, a temperance house, six churches, a Masonic lodge, a tannery, two blacksmiths, three physicians and three teachers.

Decline of Shipbuilding in Pugwash: Shipbuilding began to decline in the 1870s but did not cease until 1919. Pugwash went through an economic decline and even the railway line which was built with a spur into Pugwash in 1889 did not give the expected boost.

Pugwash Fires: Devastating fires destroyed much of the village in 1877, 1890, 1898, 1901, 1928, 1929. Think about what might have caused these fires. The last fire of note occurred on May 12, 1929 when 35 buildings were consumed.

Cyrus Eaton and Pineo Lodge: After this fire, Cyrus Eaton bought Pineo Lodge (now known as Thinkers’ Lodge) and the land adjacent to it, which is now Eaton Park. The Pugwash Park Commission, which owns and administers the Lodge, was established in August 1929 as a non‐profit corporation by an act of the Nova Scotia Legislature. Cyrus Eaton employed many of the local people to transport the soil from a hill by the wharf (which can be seen in earlier photos of Pugwash) to fill and build up the land for the park.

1996 Fire at Thinkers Lodge: In 1996 fire at Thinkers Lodge started by an electrical short in the walls of the gift shop. Firefighters from four towns rushed to douse the fire, and villagers from Pugwash hurried to the Lodge. Firefighters handed every piece of furniture, every hooked rug, photograph, lamp and book to villagers who waited outside forming a long line all the way to the Lobster Factory. They passed each treasure hand to hand from one person to another.

History of Thinkers Lodge Building:

The original Pineo Building likely had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs on either side of our front door. The kitchen was probably added on when a small building was moved here. In 1929, Cyrus Eaton hired Andrew Cobb, a well-known architect from Halifax to remodel it. The great room, the room where the Nobel Prize and Lenin Prize, and the Cyrus Eaton and Anne Eaton bedrooms would have been added. Each room has a fireplace and bathroom. You can see photographs of what it looked like before it was remodeled on the Thinkerslodgehistories.com website.

A primary concern was staying warm in winter and protecting against the wind off the Strait. Consequently, there were no windows on this west-facing wall when the original house was constructed, somewhere between 1822 and 1842. We believe it was enlarged in the 1880s when the kitchen and Anne Eaton’s room were added. Cobb did the most to change the Lodge. He the great room, the room where the Nobel Peace Prize and Lenin Peace are, Cyrus Eaton’s room, the third staircase, and bedroom upstairs, the windows and west facing porch. This has the effect of opening the house up to the sunsets and the view of the Strait. Ron Burdock is the man for this section.

Wood fire places entirely heated The Lodge until 1958. Then Eaton added an oil furnace to heat the downstairs rooms. During the recent restoration in 2010, heat was expanded to all rooms.

The restoration in 2010 to convert this building into an historic site was overseen by CREDA who also oversaw the building of Joggins, the UNESCO site

Back in the Gift Shop: Encourage buying gifts and also making donation. Remind people that we have drawing for up to 13 people to stay in Thinkers Lodge. Remind them we do weddings, conferences, workshops, and retreats for executives. Ask them to do a review on TripAdvisor.